Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
I started from using a Nuforce udac2 and later on upgraded to a Taiwanese brand DAC/AMP combo called DA&T U1s which costs about $400. Recently I've acquired a Chord Mojo and even though Mojo is intended to be a portable DAC/AMP, I found that the DAC portion is somehow better than the one in my U1s. (And of course WAY better than udac2) I've been using the Mojo as a reference DAC for a while and became curious about how a well built dedicated DAC would sound like.
Now I've been listening to the DAC-80 for several hours, A/B testing with an RCA switcher (Mojo -> Asgard, DAC-80 -> Asgard) and I can say that the DAC-80 is clearly better and offers a balanced sound all around.
I'm using an HD700 (also from Massdrop), and the soundstage really opens up coming from Mojo to DAC-80. Instruments are more realistic in the recordings, especially piano and strings. Vocals tend to get hot because of the notorious treble spike of HD700, but on the DAC-80 it feels more relaxed and well placed in space. I even found out that a certain sound which I always considered noise in the background of one particular violin track was actually the violinist breathing!!
I think the Mojo's strong suit is its detail and accuracy, yet the congested soundstage wraps up too many information in a small space, restricting its sound to be as musical & natural as the DAC-80.
The DAC-80, on the other hand, has a slightly softer touch to its edge (just a tad softer, it's still very detailed and precise) and a larger soundstage both in depth and in width. The result is a very natural and effortless sound, which places all the instruments and vocals around your head in the right place and distance.
Your review has gotten me curious about this DAC, and I may just get one.
It sounds quite promising. Thanks!
Though I think there's something I need to point out here: Making the DAC-80 work on a PC requires a bit more than plug & play.
Drivers are needed and DS Sampling rate should be set following their Manual. (https://www.optoma.co.uk/uploads/HardwareManuals/DAC80-HWM--.pdf) I'm using Windows 10 and after installing their drivers, I went straight to listening and didn't bother setting the sampling rate to 192k/24bit (as recommended in their manual) and found that a popping/clicking sound keeps showing up every 1~2 minutes. Windows DS default is 44.1k/16bit and I think the pop sound happens mostly when the DAC-80 is operating in this mode. (I tried connecting the DAC-80 with an iPad with a lightning CCK and it also pops while playing from iTunes)
However, after setting the DS sampling rate on Windows to 192k/24bit as described in their Manual, the pop sounds are gone for good. I think the DAC-80 kind of needs everything to be upsampled to 192K/24bit to work properly. I don't mind having my mp3 or lossless files upsampled to 192K/24bit but I guess some people might be concerned about this.
Thanks Again.
Thanks again